Christmas Links Christmas Baking with SusieJ

Advent Calendars

The anticipation of Advent is often more fun than the reality of
Christmas morning. Advent calendars are a great way to get the anticipation
started.

Leslie Harpold focuses
on her memories of Christmas. Each day has a memory, a link, and a
recipe, poem or animation. This is my favorite of the calendars I've
found so far. Last year she asked readers to contribute; here's mine.Leslie Harpold passed away the weekend of Dec. 9 and
10th, 2006. Take a look at her fantastic calendars while
the domain remains active. She was an amazingly talented woman.

Yes, all those one-use web sites are really simplistic, but they can be
very clever in a very simple way. If you spend most of your time inside or
in the car, do you really need to know more than whether to carry an
umbrella? Here's one to answer the question "Is it Christmas?"

Recycle bin Advent calendar, or all you need is a glue gun, some
markers and an overflowing recycle bin — and who doesn't have an
overflowing recycle bin?

Games and Toys on Line

With global warming, there's less and less chance of a White
Christmas each year. Why not make your own snow? No
mess, no fuss, no cleanup!

Even without a white Christmas, you can still build a
snowman. And you won't get cold and wet, but can still enjoy some
hot cocoa.

This
gingerbread house is all the fun of decoration your own house,
without the mess or calories. Years ago I'd hoped I could get my Flash
and design skills up to this, but this would be hard to beat!

Normally, Flash games skate right on by my awareness. This year, I
set out to find some really cute, not-too-challenging, fun, wintry
games. What better than a game that combines the fun of ice skating
with the danger of hot cocoa? Challenging, but you can always
reward yourself with some hot cocoa.

It might look like a word game to you, but
it's actually helping to
feed starving children. I'm up to level 47 and have donated 1,840
grains of rice as of yesterday night. As my husband said (well after
we should have been in bed) "Stop! The people who read dictionaries
must stop! They found my weakness." But first, I just want to get to
2,000 grains...

I'm more of a smoker woman myself, but it's amazing what you can
do with a nutcracker on
the web these days.

Tired of mailing pictures of the kids? Tired of mailing pictures of
the cat with the caption "no kids yet"? You can still make your own Christmas cards in Photoshop (or the
Gimp). These also look like great tutorials for anyone who misses
Aldus Freehand and Adobe Illustrator.

Everyone has a digital camera now. And they all seem to have more
features than you can use, but the pictures are just as good (or bad)
as the ones you took years ago. But, if you know what you are doing,
you can take a good Christmas photo, even of
something tricky, like Christmas lights.

We holiday-obsessed geeks get unnaturally excited when we can
decorate our electronics. In addition to the backgrounds, screen
savers and desktop widgets, Firefox can be decorated for the holidays. Be in the
Christmas spirit even while browsing www.ScroogeAndMarley.com!

I found this flash animation on a games site, but it's more of a turkey
tutorial. Thankfully, it takes less time to view than it will to
defrost and roast the bird.

Crafts

This craft is particularly timely, as the news reminds us every day that
it is cold and flu season, and have we washed our hands yet? These little glycerin
soaps made in an ice cube tray will make the job less onerous —
and us less odorous.

Zakka
Life has been in my blog rotation for over a year. She posts recipes,
decorating ideas and crafts so simple even I could do them. If the crafts
aren't thrilling enough, check out her recipes, which are often of Japanese
home-style food that can be made in America.

If you live in a cold enough climate — and as I write this
winter finally arrived in Philadelphia, you can make wreathes of ice with some Christmas
greenery, a tube pan, a strong ribbon and freezing outdoor temperatures.

I love crafting, but have even less time to craft than I do to clean.
This is the craft for me, candy canes
from a sheet of paper. The other needed supply is a red marker.

Charities

It might
look like a word
game to you, but it's actually helping to feed starving
children. I'm up to level 47 and have donated 1,840 grains of rice
as of yesterday night. As my husband said (well after we should have
been in bed) "Stop! The people who read dictionaries must stop! They
found my weakness." But first, I just want to get to 2,000
grains...

Tales of the Season

Everyone has produced a holiday special, yet lists of top holiday
specials still feauter the same core: Charlie Brown, Rudolf, Santa,
Frosty. That's because most of them are pretty awful. More interesting
is a list of 10 of the last successful
specials.

I'm old enough to remember seeing Bing Crosby and David
Bowie singing their Christmas duet when it first aired on Crosby's
Christmas special. My father loved Crosby and his generation of crooners and
we must have watched Crosby's special every year, but I remember nothing
else from them. I searched for the song desperately for years. Of course,
after I found it on a lone album, it was on every compilation the next
year.

Learn the secrets of Rudolph the Red-Nosed
Reindeer! Always suspected that the version shown today was a bit
shorter than what you remember from childhood? Wondered at the effect of the
special on Burl Ive's career? Now you can find out.

In Germany, the Christkind comes on Christmas Eve to leave a
present for children. On December 6,
Saint Nicholas comes to fill the shoes of good children with nuts,
fruits and candy. The half-year I lived with my godfather and his
wife, I put out a size-ten boot!

Mimi Hiller pays homage to her grandmother and the joy of family
traditions as she converts
her Bubbe's recipes from "handfuls" to "cups." Having worked with
many of my own grandmother's recipes, I tell you this is not an easy
job.

History & Traditions

If you've read Grimm's fairy tales, you know that German culture of
centuries past has a wide mean streak. In the tales the world is cruel, but
the wicked are eventually horrifically punished. Disney did a lot of
whitewashing. Of course, there couldn't be a man to bring gifts to all the
good girls and boys, without there being some creature to punish the
naughty. That creature is Krampus, a rather
horrifying, goat-like figure, who still prowls early Christmas festivities
in southern Germany, Switzerland and Austria.

Let's put the Zhu Zhu in perspective: we all remember these toys, but how many are still must-haves?
Many have become classics, but there's a demarcation line somewhere in the
80s: while the customers became more desperate, the toys became less
worthwhile.

Even more resources are available from Food History News on line and
through their newsletter. The also offer an extensive, searchable
directory of food history museums
world-wide. The German Bread Museum is one of my fondest memories
from Ulm, Germany.

Richard Sellmer Verlag, one of the first calendar publishers,
offers a history of
printed advent calendars and museum. I'm still
looking for the calendar I had as a child -- a scene of baking and
domestic harmony, of course!

Miscellaneous Good Stuff

I am a Doctor
Who geek, both old series and new series. I have a favorite Doctor
(Pertwee) and three favorite companion (Liz Shore, Sarah Jane Smith and
Turlough), but not a favorite villain, unlike some fans.

After two months of the same one hundred songs on the radio, everyone is
ready for a break. The fine folks at MetaFilter have a couplesuggestions for holiday music.

When I asked all my hip, music-loving friends for recommendations
for the next big song, a.j., a former WKDU DJ, recommended WOXY's holiday feed. If a
punk, post-punk, indie or any other altie-flavor band recorded a
Christmas song, you'll find it here, along with Frank and Ella. Best
of all, if you like it, you can buy it from that page! Sure, there are
some real clunkers, but that's what the mute button is for. (There's
an iTunes feature: mute until this song is over.)

Our cat was sedentary enough by the time we put up our first tree,
she had no interest in investigating it. To be honest, as a rescued
barn cat, she was convinced that any expenditure of energy would
result in immediate starvation. Not like these
cats, who should really cut back on the 'nip. Notice that the grey
cats match the blue and silver tree decorations.

The National Museum of American History has Julia Child's kitchen
as an exhibit. Watching The French Chef with my mother (along
with The Electric Company and Sesame Street) is one of my
earliest and happiest memories. The exhibit is also on-line at NMAH | What's
Cooking.